How High Does Maine Actually Rank for Power Outages In the US?

Sadly, I'm pretty sure there are still folks out there without power.

As I write this, there's still nearly 5000 Versant customers without power. Thankfully, that number is getting lower all the time, but there are folks who've been without for several days at this point. Luckily, I've never had to deal with it that bad. The longest I've ever been out (knock wood) is about 30 hours.

We lose it so much where I live, we finally bought a generator a couple years ago. And I have to say, the only thing I might *miss* about losing power, is that I now no longer have that thrill of when it comes back on. when it's been off forever and you're kinda losing hope, BOOM! It comes back. I think I  miss that feeling slightly. But I'll deal with it.

So where does Maine stack up against the rest of the country for outages?

It will hardly come as a shocker, but if you add up all our power outages since 2013, we've spent 140+ hours in the dark. That's a lot. And there are certainly plenty of people who've been out that long for multiple storms. Ice storm '98? Folks were weeks without power. Winter Strom Elliot did a pretty solid run of damage over the weekend.

Here's the other takeaway, the state right behind us is Louisiana, and they're about 20% behind us. The next closest states are approaching outages half as long as ours, and they're rounding out the Top 5. That means we're sitting around waaaaay longer than everyone else. So if you're always feeling like you're in the dark forever, it's because you are. At least compared to the rest of the country.

On the other hand, I know for a fact crews have been out since before this storm even started trying to get a handle on it. Maine is a tough state with all our old growth pine, and just trees in general. It's great to have trees, but it wreaks havoc on our grid. So again, huge shoutout to the line workers who are out getting it done. Thank you so much for bringing the lights back as quickly as possible.

Keep scrolling for amazing photos of the damage from Winter Storm Elliot...